


avalanche

by velvetcrowbars



Category: Tales of Zestiria
Genre: M/M, Post-Canon, Spoilers, alternate title: a vent fic that wont leave my brain, this is Fine Right?, throws flower petals on keyboard, warning: purple prose bullshit Ahead
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-19
Updated: 2015-04-19
Packaged: 2018-03-24 16:48:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3776062
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/velvetcrowbars/pseuds/velvetcrowbars
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p></p><blockquote>
  <p>Sorey’s fingers are tangled in his hair when he lets the pebble of a question slip off his tongue, a pebble that triggers the landslide, “Do you regret it?”</p>
  <p>“Regret what?”</p>
  <p>“Waiting for me.”</p>
</blockquote>
            </blockquote>





	avalanche

**Author's Note:**

> hashtag still sormik burning 2k15

“Do you regret it?”

 

“Regret what?”

 

“Waiting for me.”

 

The floor of the ruins is strangely warm beneath his hands, oddly soft beneath his back. Dry packed earth and polished stone molded together and perhaps it’s some ancient magic or his own delirium that makes it feel comfortable, but it does. Not the same as lying on his own bed, a thousand footsteps and a world away, but the comfort of a mattress is not what Mikleo has been seeking for year after lonely year, not the almost crippling sense of hard set hope that rested under his feet.

 

Sorey is cradling his head in the crook of his arm, something familiar and easy as breathing once they had picked a spot in the peculiar ruins to spend the night, not particularly in any hurry to leave. They had time. They have more time than they know what to do with, if Mikleo is completely honest with himself. But that’s fine—it’s fine to have small infinity after small infinity strung continuously together after the nineteen short years they’d foolishly tried to make long. Fourteen years of loving him in silence, another five of loving him in quiet touches and fear that made his blood hum, three hundred more of loving him alone.Time had been cruel that way, three hundred years in exchange for a forever, a bargain made with tight pressed mouths and desperation clinging to the stitch that had held them always within reach of each other. But Mikleo knows time’s selfishness as if it were his own. An excess of time seems a small price to pay.

 

Sorey’s fingers are tangled in his hair when he lets the pebble of a question slip off his tongue, a pebble that triggers the landslide, _do you regret it?_ Sorey had gotten into the habit of braiding his hair into intricate knots when Mikleo was half paying attention, more caught up in the feeling of Sorey’s hands so close to him than the tangled mess his hair was becoming. Hands that had healed, destroyed, created, loved. Hands that had built their makeshift home together with stubby fingers in Mikleo’s heart and left it there to decay with barely a warning muttered behind a fading smile. Not that it mattered. Mikleo would always fix the broken floorboards and repaint over the patches Sorey had left behind. It’s his home too after all. It’s not as if Sorey had a choice but to leave; but they’re young and they’re not monsters, Mikleo knew they could conquer happiness on their own.

 

“Why would you even ask that?” the anger is biting in the back of his throat, unwanted and unintentional but not something he can deny exists. A bitterness that tastes ugly on his tongue and acidic on his lips. He fights the urge to shift his head and look at Sorey, see the guilt bringing his mouth into that crooked smile and forest eyes downcast and murky, far away from Mikleo, stuck in the slick blackness and battles that have long since been over. Mikleo knows this, expects this even. So instead he nestles closer, laying his hand over the place Sorey’s heart beats through the fabric of his shirt, a steady hammer against cloth that he’s always tried his best to keep alive.

 

“Because I need to know. I need to know what I took from you.”

 

It’s breathed against the top of his forehead, sounding more a whispered desire than a blatant confession. The flame of his anger that had been kindled promptly snuffs itself out, replaced with the ocean of longing that had so long filled Mikleo’s waking hours. He remembers it all, every blindingly aching day of it, a gaping wound that had festered and refused to heal took up permanent residence in his chest—only to be mended when he felt those poignant hands clutch to his own, see the ruffles of chocolate hair blown in the wind, feel the stable and real pulse bump against his fingers. Yet even then the empty hole refused to completely heal, it lingered on the edge of his consciousness and hurts when the sun shines too brightly. He will carry that scar for however many more years until he no longer feels it’s weight, can no longer trace it’s outline across the map of his soul. It throbs slightly even now, a reminder of too empty nights and creaking loneliness that made his stomach churn.

 

“Stupid." He stops and furrows his brow, exhaling through the twinge of his jaw, " _Stupid._ ”

 

He hadn’t realized the tears heavy against his throat until he spoke. “You didn't take anything.” Mikleo lets the words travel in the space between them, a million molecules of desolation that clung to his lungs.

 

“After you were gone, there was nothing left to take.”

 

Lips brushed against the crown of his head, lips he had traced with the tip of his thumb and lips that had let his true name spill from them countless of times, in war and in peace alike. Lips that taste like nectar and salt and dark midnight fairy tales, like pollen and galaxies and marble. Like hope. Mikleo knows Sorey, every corner and bruise and curve, down to the scars cut sharp on his ribcage and constellations of freckles at the edge of his spine. In the end maybe this had been to his own detriment. To know another body like he knew his own, and then no longer having it to hold and touch and _know_ , was as if an extension of himself had gone missing.

 

Sorey pulled his arm in tighter around Mikleo’s shoulders, bringing him up so that they were eye level. Mikleo’s hair had fallen across his face, as is a common occurrence with its length. He had thought to cut it a couple of times, but when Sorey had shouted his delight at it, he had decided that maybe it isn’t so bad this way. He’d spent so many years trying not to change, to remain a perfect picture frame of history, a constant in a sea of new. It felt unnatural then, to change.

 

There’s the tiniest of smiles on Sorey’s face when Mikleo finally lets his eyes fall on him. It’s dim and sadly amused, like a single candle in a pitch dark room, a boat caught in a trepidatious current. Moving his hand to push the hair from Mikleo’s face, he remembers how beautiful Sorey’s hands are; callused and weather worn, sun soaked hands that thrummed with opportunities and potential. They remind Mikleo that Sorey is still a wild boy made of hurricane winds and hollow bones with a clumsy tongue and golden words.

 

“I don’t believe you.”

 

“You don’t have to. But it’s the truth.”

 

Sorey’s gaze flutters from Mikleo’s lips to his eyes, looking for some kind of reassurance that what he’s about to say wouldn’t earn another natural disaster reaction.

 

“I guess it…doesn’t matter, does it?” It sounds heavy there, sitting on Sorey’s tongue, and Mikleo feels the searing burn settle behind his chest, work its way into his veins and fill in the cracks of himself that had begun to crumble again.

 

“Sorey—“ He feels the words catching in his throat, threatening to spill and he’s afraid that if he says them too quickly it won’t be the same. “Right now is enough. If it’s with you, it’ll always be enough for me.”

 

Sorey closes the small gap between them with one fluid movement and touches his lips to Mikleo’s cheekbone, the side of his nose, edge of his jawline and corner of his eyelids, each time a different emotion pressed flush against his skin; _hello again, I’m back, oh there you are, how I’ve missed you_. When he draws back again and grins lopsided, corners of his eyes scrunched with tiny lines and dotted with the line of freckles forming a bridge across his nose, Mikleo knows that this is still the boy who’s demons are wildfire and he would readily burn his hands to destroy them.

 

So he lets himself laugh into Sorey’s mouth when he kisses him and punches his arm when Sorey knocks them off balance, bumping their heads against the ruin wall. Mikleo lets himself smile and feel the mirth of new found memories and sweet-nothings whispered against his tongue because Sorey simply _being_ is enough for him.

 

It always has been, and it always will be.

**Author's Note:**

> PLSA listen to Avalanche by Walk the Moon. Feel my Pain and Inner Destruction


End file.
